After Overtourism: Pivoting from Traveler-Shaming to Systemic Solutions

I remember the day I introduced the term “overtourism” to the world, back in August 2016. At the time, we were working to build an industry framework through our editorial coverage on Skift, designed to help businesses manage visitor flows more responsibly. The word emerged as a piece of industry jargon: a concise, utilitarian tool meant to spark new strategies, policies, and technological fixes that would prevent overloaded destinations and frayed infrastructure.

But over time, the term slipped out of the boardrooms and planning sessions and drifted into the mainstream media, its original intent obscured. For too long, much of the tourism industry’s approach to mitigating climate change has centered on personal responsibility. It is, after all, easier to lecture individuals on their choice of transportation and hotel accommodations than to confront the behemoth that is modern travel infrastructure.

Instead of a prompt for sober analysis and constructive solutions, “overtourism” became a flashpoint in the cultural narrative, a shorthand for blaming travelers themselves. Suddenly, anyone booking a v